


Someone He Can't Bear to Lose

by scribbling_desk



Category: Doctor Who & Related Fandoms
Genre: Episode: s09e05 The Girl Who Died, F/M, Other, People You Can't Live Without, Realisations
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-03
Updated: 2018-10-03
Packaged: 2019-07-24 12:47:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,095
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16175378
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scribbling_desk/pseuds/scribbling_desk
Summary: Immortality isn’t living forever - that’s not what it feels like. Immortality is everybody else dying. She might meet someone she can’t bear to lose. - The DoctorAnd then he encountered Ashildr, and Donna’s words echoed in his head, echoed in the TARDIS, in every pulse and beat of his hearts. Her words sounded as he looked in the water and saw the face of Caecilius staring back out at him. Her words sounded as he looked at the multitude of boards around the console room and as he approached the last board, as he reached out for the piece of chalk and wrote the last of the equation.Donna’s words, the words that seemed to have unknowingly been the cause for his current face, the cause for his actions and behaviour since he gained it, echoed and pounded and raged around and around and around as he made the necessary adjustments and prodded the TARDIS into movement.





	Someone He Can't Bear to Lose

**Author's Note:**

> More might come of this, might not, but this is what I've had stuck in my head for the past few days of misery and I had to get it out. So! Enjoy?

Time.

For such a small word, it encapsulates so much more than it’s size. Humans try to define it, to mark it as it travels. Dates, calendars, holidays, anniversaries - they all try so hard, but fail to understand that it’s just a ball of wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey, criss-crossing all over itself in twists and turns, left then right, up then down, frontways, backways, this way and that.

Time Lords understand it better than humans, being Gallifreyans who have looked into the Untempered Schism of _Before_ and survived sane and intact. They can hear it’s echoes, feel it in their bones, but even they can be surprised. They cannot see their own paths in time - they can see others, see what is fixed, see what can be changed, see what can - _might_ \- happen, but not their own. They were never able to see the death of themselves or their planet.

The Doctor has never been the exception in this regard. Every person - being - he meets, their paths spiral out around them, twisting here and there, and then vanishing into the darkness that is _After_. The Doctor can tell those who will travel with him as their paths vanish from his sight as they converge with his own but then reappear later. Rose, dear beautiful Rose, had reappeared in another time stream, her life diverging away from his own in a sense of permanence. Martha had reappeared, then vanished here and there, indicating that while she may leave his company, leave him alone to travel her own path, she would encounter him periodically until she died old and grey in her husband’s arms. The Doctor did his best to ignore the paths winding around Amy and Rory - their tangles and twists making even his own head hurt when he felt like trying to read them, but he could tell, could read beyond the tangle that they, too, would die old and grey in one another’s arms. Clara’s path made him throw his hands up in despair and declare himself done with reading a human’s path.

Most of his companions died old and grey despite their travelling with him.

Donna though, Donna confused him. Her path aligned with his very briefly - the wedding incident, he realised after - and then verged off briefly before once more colliding with his. Then, nothing. He had been hopeful at first, hopeful that maybe, just maybe, he had found someone that would spend their life with him, someone he could call a true friend that would die in his arms old and grey with a smile on their face.

It was never to happen, and walking away from her made his hearts ache worse than when he’d looked into _Before_.

But despite leaving her to continue her own darkened, unreadable path, she echoed through his, her voice snapping through the corridors of the TARDIS, her laughter present with every wheeze of the Old Girl. Every flash of Amy’s red hair had him thinking on her, every smirk of River’s believing she was there with him in some way.

He checked on all his companions as they continued to travel their paths without him, made sure that they remained happy and safe. He checked on Donna as well, getting all the details from Wilf who always managed to find him with a happy bounce to his step. Sometimes it would be years for him between visits, and he would forget what Wilf’s smile looked like, how it would fall whenever the Doctor would admit that he hadn’t worked out how to bring his granddaughter truly back to him.

Because Donna’s laugh, her dark red hair, her smirk, they were all _less_ than what they had been when she had travelled with him, and seeing that change was breaking Wilf’s heart. It broke the Doctor’s hearts too, because while all the others were better for leaving his path, for travelling their own, Donna was worse. So he worked, and he worked, and he worked. Every moment he could, every small part of time he could snatch, he worked on the conundrum that was Donna Noble and how to fix her, how to bring her _back_.

And then he encountered Ashildr, and Donna’s words echoed in his head, echoed in the TARDIS, in every pulse and beat of his hearts. Her words sounded as he looked in the water and saw the face of Caecilius staring back out at him. Her words sounded as he looked at the multitude of boards around the console room and as he approached the last board, as he reached out for the piece of chalk and wrote the last of the equation.

Donna’s words, the words that seemed to have unknowingly been the cause for his current face, the cause for his actions and behaviour since he gained it, echoed and pounded and raged around and around and around as he made the necessary adjustments and prodded the TARDIS into movement.

For once, the Doctor didn’t go directly to Donna’s location. Instead, he narrowed in on Wilf, and blinked up in sadness at the hospital that loomed over him. Wilf was looking towards the door of his room when the Doctor walked in, and a smile spread over his face as the Doctor hesitated at the doorway.

“Hello Doctor.” Wilf rasped. “Been a while.”

“Wilf.” The Doctor settled into a seat next to Wilf’s bed, facing the door just in case. Wilf was pale, a grey cast to his skin. The Doctor tilted his head, eyes flickering over the human’s path skipping over the parts where it coincided with his own until he reached the end. “How are you?”

“Dying, old friend.” Wilf reached out and patted the Doctor’s hand where it was clenched in the bedsheets. “Oh, hush. It’s about time, you know. I’ve lived a long life. And you? How are you? You’re looking a little different since the last time we talked.”

The Doctor couldn’t help but snort. “Just a little. Couldn’t help it - got into a bit of a situation. How’s Sylvia? Donna? Shaun?”

It was Wilf’s turn to snort. “It has been quite some time since your last visit.” He sighed and stared at the ceiling. The Doctor winced at the resignation he could hear - he’d heard it from multiple people over his centuries, but it was the first time he’d heard it from Wilf in regards to his infrequent visits. “Sylvia died earlier this year - car accident. Shaun died in the same accident.”

“Donna?” The Doctor asked cautiously.

Wilf turned his head to look at him again, eyes determined. “Have you worked it out? Worked out how to bring my girl back?”

The Doctor slowly nodded. “I think so.”

Wilf hummed, relaxing back into the bed beneath him, eyes drooping. “Don’t let her waste away any longer, you hear? You go and get her and fix her. I’ll be here that long.”

The Doctor patted Wilf’s hand as the man drifted off to sleep. “I’ll bring her back.” He murmured, heading out the door. “I can’t do it alone anymore.”

The TARDIS hummed mournfully around him as he relocated closer to Donna. She liked Wilf, liked his humanness and joy, and expressed quite forcefully her opinion on his upcoming death. The Doctor stroked one of her struts as she let out a last questioning wheeze before settling. “No, Old Girl, we can’t save him too.” He pressed his forehead to the strut. “His time has come, you can read that as well as I can."

She gave a stuttered beep and then fell silent. The Doctor could feel her gathering herself, pooling everything she had into her power core, getting ready to help him save Donna. He stroked her strut before heading out the door to the silent street they had landed in, the yard of a familiar house.

It was, somewhat sadly, the same house he could remember visiting numerous times before, the familiar brickwork and windows of the Noble family home. The house was still, as though it were holding it’s breath in anticipation, and aside from the tick-ticks of a number of clocks inside, the only other sound was the soft tears of a woman hunched over the kitchen table.

The Doctor watched for a moment through the kitchen window. Her hair, once a vibrant dark red, was now dull and lifeless - even more so than the last time he’d checked on her. She was paler, too, hunched against the cruelty of the world, no longer able to see the joy and beauty in it. There was paper spread out over the table in front of her - bills, funeral home information - and his hearts twisted as he realised that she could see her grandfather’s end as well as he could.

Quietly, so much quieter than even he believed he was capable of being, he slipped inside the house and up behind her. Before she could react, before she could realise she was no longer alone, he pressed his fingers to her temples and she was unconscious, slumping over the table.

Old Girl chirruped at the Doctor as he carried Donna down into the heart of the TARDIS, to where he’d set up what he needed. The TARDIS was as determined as he was at getting Donna back, golden tendrils already spinning out of her power core and reaching for the redhead.

“Gently, gently,” The Doctor told her, placing Donna on the cot set up. A golden tendril brushes against Donna’s cheek and then pulls back, twisting and twining towards the mug sitting on the small table next to the cot. The tendril picked the mug up, taking it over to the glowing power core. The Doctor watched with a small smile as the mug vanishes amongst the blue of the Artron particles that powered all TARDIS’, and then the mug reappears, blue receding from the mug left on the floor. The TARDIS’ power core continued to pulse, but just a little dimmer, a little slower that before.

The Doctor reached for the mug, peering down at the mix of blue and gold energy contained within it. He knew the gold was the last of the Huon particles that had been lurking in his Old Girl’s power core for centuries, that had once lurked within Donna’s body. According to the mathematics he’d been working, and his further studying of Gallifreyan biology, the mix of Huon and Artron particles would help Donna’s body to transition.

Gently, carefully, he carried it back over to his best friend, and propping her head up, poured the particle mix into her mouth. His hearts beat heavily behind his ribs as he waited, and waited, but then she started to glow, tendrils of blue, of gold, wrapping around her body.

The Doctor grinned, and pulled the headset mechanism for the Arch over and onto Donna’s head. Holding his breath, he reached out and pressed the activation button on the top.

For a moment, a hearts breaking moment, nothing happened, and then the energy twisting around Donna began to move fast, and faster, and faster.

“Please,” He begged quietly, barely audible over the pleading pulses of the TARDIS’ heart. “Please.”

Around him, the TARDIS began to shudder, and in front of him, Donna glowed ever more gold, the blue vanishing bit by bit. As the last speck of blue vanished, Donna’s back arched, her head tilted back and her mouth opened in a silent scream. The Doctor reached for her before remembering that he mustn’t touch her, and he fell back, fists clenching against his thighs.

“Please,” He muttered, again and again and again, the TARDIS shuddering under and around him, Donna screaming silently before him.

Then…then it was over. The gold vanished between one plead and the next, the TARDIS stilling, Donna slumping to the cot under her like she’d slumped over the table earlier. The Doctor reached out, pulled the headset off Donna’s head, and then scooped her up. He paused before leaving the TARDIS’s heart, looking over at the blue column. “Thank you,” He told his oldest friend. “Thank you.”

* * *

The scans in the Sick Bay confirmed the success that the Doctor and the TARDIS had hoped for.

The Doctor settled in a chair beside the bed he’d placed Donna on, his diary in one hand, pen in the other. He wrote, wrote of the equations he’d laboured over for centuries, of the way Artron and Huon particles worked in harmony, of the terror he felt watching his beloved Donna scream and being unable to do anything. Eventually, he came to a stop, pen resting against the paper despite the fact that he had nothing left to write - not yet, not until she woke.

The Doctor looked up to check on Donna and found blue-grey eyes staring at him. They stared at one another in surprise for a heartbeat, and the Doctor’s diary and pen fell from his hands. “Donna.”

Donna took in a shuddering breath, and then she was moving, sliding off the bed and onto his lap. She pressed her face against his neck, hands fisting his hoodie, and without any hesitation, he wrapped his arms around her, one hand tangling in her red hair.

“Donna,” He rasped against her temple as she started to shake. “My darling Donna.”

Time, constantly moving and shifting around him - around _them_ \- stilled, and the Doctor was unable to tell how long they sat there, Donna shaking in his lap and then crying against his neck. All he knew was the warmth of her body, the smell of her hair, and the long-forgotten lullaby he hummed against her temple as he rocked them slightly.

When Donna pulled back, red-nosed and red-eyed, he smiled at her, wiping at her wet cheeks. “Hello darling.”

Donna let out a crackling, wet chuckle, then buried her face in his neck once more. “How?” She asked roughly.

“Time,” He murmured, “Time and a little mathematics. How are you feeling?”

“Different,” She told him. “Different, bigger, smaller, everywhere and nowhere. I’ve got your knowledge, but the memories…they’re dulled, further away. What did you do?”

“Adjusted a Chameleon Arch,” He admitted. “If it can change a Gallifreyan to a human, why not a human to a Gallifreyan?”

Her head popped up and she frowned at him. “How long did it take for you to come up with that idea?”

“Longer than I want to admit, longer than I care to think about.” The Doctor tucked a strand of her hair behind her ear. “There’s still a couple more things we need to do to make sure that you’ll survive, but the worst of it’s over.”

Her frown deepened. “The Schism?”

“The Schism,” He agreed. “But not yet. Now, we have to go see your grandfather.”

Her hands, still fisting his jumper, spasmed. “He’s dying.”

“Yes. I saw him before I went to get you. He doesn’t have much longer.”

“I know.” Donna climbed off his lap and shot him look. “You’ve got a different face.”

The Doctor leaned down to pick up his dropped diary and pen. “I gained a new one not long after I left you. Then that face passed on a few years ago to this one.”

“Caecilius.” Donna stated triumphantly. “That’s who you look like - Caecilius from Pompeii.”

The Doctor guided her out of the Sick Bay. “Yes, it’s his face. It took me quite a while to figure out why it was so familiar, but then…well.” He dropped the diary and pen on a chair as they passed into the Console Room.

“You’ve redecorated.” Donna mused, spinning around to take in the whole room. She smiled at the console, though, and pressed a hand against the column in the middle. “Hello, old girl.” Beneath her hand, the TARDIS pulsed and wheezed with joy, and Donna laughed. “Oh, I’ve missed you.”

“She’s missed you as well.” The Doctor leaned against one of the railings. “For months afterwards, whenever I opened a door in here, she made it open onto your room.” Donna snorted. “At one point, there was an incident that led to non-essential rooms being stripped from her. She took your room and buried it so deep in her systems that they couldn’t find it’s pattern - she never lost it, just like she never lost the control room. _My_ room, however…” He trailed off with a smirk and a shrug. That incident had confused Amy and Rory, because the Old Girl refused to let them in the room. Amy had spent weeks trying to convince the TARDIS to let her in to no avail.

Donna reached out and patted the column. “Thank you.” The TARDIS wheezed at her. “So, are we going to go see Gramps?”

The Doctor waved a hand at the doors. “All you have to do is step out.” She looked at him, startled. “It’s only been - “ He glanced at one of the screens on the console. “24 hours since I kidnapped you from your house, so he should be right there in the hospital where I left him yesterday.”

Donna glanced at the doors. “Do you think…?”

The Doctor stepped up next to her and wrapped an arm around her shoulders. “He’s been asking me every time I visited whether I had worked out how to save you, return you to him,” He told her quietly. “Every time I’ve had to say no. Yesterday I could answer yes, and the relief on his face was astounding. I think he’s been holding on as long as he has in order to make sure that _you_ would be alright. He’s not going to hate you or turn you away because you’re no longer human - he’s going to rejoice that you’re back, that you no longer look like a ghost of who you once were.”

Donna frowned. “I wasn’t that bad, was I?”

The Doctor smiled slightly. “You haven’t looked in a mirror since the Arch, but when you do, you’ll realise. Now, do I have to give you a push, or…?”

Donna snorted. “You know, I kinda dig the Scottish accent.” She strode down the ramp and flung the door to the TARDIS open and behind her, the Doctor grinned happily, the TARDIS pulsing with happiness.

He didn’t know what tomorrow would bring for them, what he was going to tell Donna about River, or how he was going to tell Clara, but at that moment he didn’t care. He had his Donna back, the Old Girl was happy, and his hearts were full to bursting.

 


End file.
